Book a Security Review

Weakness · High

CWE-191: Integer Underflow (Wrap or Wraparound)

What it is

The product subtracts one value from another, such that the result is less than the minimum allowable integer value, which produces a value that is not equal to the correct result.

2 exploited in the wildMITRE CWE 4.19.1

Severity (our rating)
High
Likelihood of exploit
Not rated by MITRE
Introduced during
Implementation
Exploited in the wild
2 known exploited CVEs

In more detail

This can happen in signed and unsigned cases.

What an attacker can do

  • DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart (Availability)
  • DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU) (Availability)
  • DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory) (Availability)
  • DoS: Instability (Availability)
  • Modify Memory (Integrity)
  • Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands (Confidentiality, Availability, Access Control)
  • Bypass Protection Mechanism (Confidentiality, Availability, Access Control)

How to prevent it

MITRE lists no specific mitigation for this weakness. Treat it like its parent weaknesses below: validate input, keep the design simple and review the code where it could appear.

How to find it

  • Automated Static Analysis. Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)

CWE-191 on MITRE's CWE site

Exploited in the wild: 2 CVEs

Vulnerabilities caused by CWE-191 that attackers have used, from CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, newest first.

All known exploited vulnerabilities

H2 Security

Found it in your code?

We review where it appears, fix it with your team, and check it was not already used against you.

Talk to our team

T Academy

Stop writing it in the first place

Learn to build software and systems without weaknesses like this one, with practice on real hosts in your browser, every objective checked on the machine.

Start free

Source: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.